Category Archives: Social Media

The feature had up until recently been held solely for some of the larger industry giants and political figures, the advice and blog section of LinkedIn has now been made available for all users to share their advice, opinions and ideas. The news of this was announced in a blog post and was suggested that is to rival Twitter; giving users the potential to publicize their brand through yet another medium, without the 140 character limit.

To give an example of how “exclusive” the influencers blog, released during October 2012 examples of some of the 150 people who used it involve Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Martha Stewart. As of now, 25.000 people will be catered for with this service – a number which will grow over the years.

As of the update, LinkedIn users can follow members outside of their existing network and use the new medium to build a new group of followers. The new medium enables them to also share photos, videos and presentations via SlideShare.

The service was initially launched in October 2012 covering a total of 150 people, but now the service will cater to an initial 25,000 people and will be expanded upon over the coming months and years.

“The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.” – Ryan Roslansky, head of content development at LinkedIn

A large reasoning for making the influencer’s blog public was to attract a new, teenage, audience.

A second feature recently released by the business social network is the ability to block members from seeing your profile, posts and prevent them from messaging you. However, it is important to take into account other ways of hindering unwanted contact such as changing your security settings and disconnecting from people.

Despite YouTube visitors watching over six billion hours of videos each and every month split between over 800 million users, not all eyes are “real”. Many users purchase fake views which YouTube have said they intend to periodically check up on, validating views on videos to remove the frauds as not to deceive users.

“When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities,” Commented YouTube software engineer Philipp Pfeiffenberger. “While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count.”

“If you’re considering paying someone to increase your view count, you may want to think again. You probably won’t get what you paid for,” stated the blog post

“Views generated by some third-party businesses and services will not be counted on YouTube, and can lead to disciplinary action against your account, including removing your video or suspending your account.” In short, it is described as cheating and unnessacary.

Although initially established as a video sharing website, YouTube is now considered a search engine, and is currently the second most frequently visited search engine in the world, shadowing behind Google.

Wolfgang Digital, a company of self-proclaimed Digital Marketing “Nerds”, recently carried out a study which examined the click through rate (or CTR) of the variety ad-types on Facebook, The study has proven that the number of clicks on ads that appear on a user’s newsfeed is significantly higher than ads elsewhere and thus receive a higher level of engagement

Over a seven month campaign, beginning in June 2013 and ending in January 2014, the Wolfgang Digital team analysed three million Facebook Impressions through 24/7 campaign. In doing so, Wolfgang Digital successfully determined that the average CTR for a facebook display ad (those which appear on the right hand side of the screen, beside the friends list), was 0.4pc,which is around half the average CTR for display ads across the net.

Ads in users news feeds however, were shown to hold a CTR of 2.09 PTC making them 51 times more likely to be clicked on than facebook display ads. The tremendous CTR of News Feed Ads is close to the CTR seen in ads by Google AdWords

There are roughly 2.4 million people across Ireland alone, who use Facebook. However, despite the massive user base, ads on Facebook often don’t receive the desired attention. Wolfgang’s figures are similar to those concluded by a study from AdRoll, stating news feed ads were 49 times more likely to generate clicks than display ads.

phone is set to be far more discernible than its predecessors. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 is set to be visibly distinct from its S3 and S4 counter-parts, with its newer more stylish design to be the next generation forerunner for the Android Phone, with the possibility of it also including an iris scanner. It is set to ship in March or April, as said by the Korean company’s mobile-product leaders.

“Many people are fanatical about iris recognition technology… We are studying the possibility,” stated Young-hee Lee, executive vice president of marketing for Samsung mobile phone division, during an interview with Bloomberg news during the CES exhibition in Las Vegas. The iris scanner works by scanning different patterns in a person’s eye and would give Samsung a competitive edge against iPhone and HTC’s fingerprint technology. However, for the iris scanner to be plausible, it would need to be more than a gimmick or an accessory to avoid the same criticism given to HTC’s One Max phone’s fingerprint authenticator system.

Lee said that the S5 should look significantly different to its predecessors too. “When we moves to S4 to S3 it’s partly true that consumers couldn’t really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market wasn’t as big” she had told Bloomberg. “For the S5 we will go back to basics. Mostly it’s about display and the feel of the cover.”

The S5 is set for release in March or April, roughly a year after the launch of the S4. Simultaneously, a new successor to the “Gear” smartwatch is set to arrive, which will be less bulky and have much more advanced features, while the new Galaxy note, a larger smartphone which targets higher-end customers, is due for launch in the second half of 2014.

Lee also said Samsung will be placing a lot more work into its Tab line of tablets in 2014. At the CES exhibition, it introduced the large 12.2 inch Galaxy TabPro and Galaxy NotePro tablets. The NotePro includes a stylus, and both models will ship in the first quarter.

How do you feel about the Galaxy S5’s idea to add iris-scan technology to their smartphones? Let us know @4pm!

Twitter has opened its self-serve advertising platform for small and medium-sized businesses in the UK, Ireland and Canada.

Twitter advertising will allow businesses to amplify their presence on Twitter. The US has seen thousands businesses using the service as a way to connect with people in their local communities and beyond.

The service allows for businesses to use Promoted Accounts to build followers who can then act as advocates for the business.

Twitter product manager Ravi Narasimhan explained “You’re in control of your ads, the audience you want to reach, and of course your budget.”

“Best of all, you will only be charged when people follow your Promoted Account or retweet, reply, favourite or click on your Promoted Tweets. You are never charged for your organic Twitter activity,” he said.

Twitter has been used as an effective marketing tool when used correctly and been able to target your tweets could prove to be a useful tool in enhancing your businesses reach.